How is the Market?
The demand for accounting and finance professionals is strong. Gordon Brown is making the Economy his number one priority for 2008, and with the recent "Credit Crunch" situation, this year will be an interesting year as caution is on most businesses agendas, yet the need for quality staff still outstrips supply.
The market in 2007 saw a steady increase in the shortage of skilled and experienced candidates from fully qualified accountants to accounts clerks. In order to ensure that you have a strong shortlist for those all important first round interviews it has become apparent that the services of a specialist recruitment consultancy such as Jennings Morton Friel Associates are paramount in order to ensure quality on the interview day.
We have found it has become increasingly necessary to advise our clients on the importance of making decisions quickly to ensure that you do not lose the first choice candidate to another position. Clients increasingly have to raise their game in terms of salary and benefit packages in order to attract the best. JMF can make sure that you are aware of the candidate’s salary expectations from the onset of the recruitment process. 2007 also saw the return of the dreaded "counter offer" from employee's current employers, a practice not seen much since the heady days of the dot.com recruitment drives.
There is also a shortage of quality candidates in the temporary and interim market. The same factors affecting the permanent market are also paramount. Sometimes clients have to compromise on their “wish list “, and concentrate on the key skills and not always the software system or particular industry sector specialists’.
In our experience striking up strong working relationships with our clients and candidates makes the recruitment process far more cost and time effective. In some respects in relation to lower level accounts positions we need to adopt some of the recruitment practices of the early 90’s, when temporary consultants did not supply a CV or arrange interviews instead they used there skill to assess the role, listen to the clients’ needs and recommend the best candidate for the post. This in turn took all the stress and hassle out of interviewing 3 to 4 candidates, offering the post and then finding out you are too late, they have taken another position.
We are predicting that 2008 will see the same skill shortages and clients will need to sit back and review their expectations and offer flexibility to attract the best people to their organisations.
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